


Arrested Quantico

by wizened_cynic



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Arrested Development References, Crack, Gen, I cannot emphasise how much crack this is, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:20:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22863160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizened_cynic/pseuds/wizened_cynic
Summary: Now is the story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one daughter who had no choice but to keep them all together. Arrested Development AU.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	Arrested Quantico

**Author's Note:**

> After watching the finale, I felt nostalgic about the show and went through my old journal looking for CM-related posts, only to discover something I had written back in February 2009.

Now is the story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one daughter who had no choice but to keep them all together. It's _Criminal Minds._

*

Emily Prentiss had recently discovered that somebody was trying to buy out the shares of her family's company, the B.A.U. After discussing this with her father Gideon, a wanted fugitive who had escaped from prison and was currently hiding in the attic of the family's model home, she decided to hold a family meeting.

But in order to actually get the members of her family to attend the meeting, she had to first convince them that it wasn't actually a meeting.

"Hey, Sister," greeted her younger brother Reid as he arrived at the model home. Being a genius, and an exceptionally observant one, he soon realized his sister's ruse. "Wait a minute, I thought we were having a chess tournament."

"Chess tournament?" said her twin sister JJ. "You said this was going to be a party."

"There's no party," Emily said. "I just needed you guys here so we can talk about this problem we're facing with the company."

"There's no party?" her older brother Morgan said in disgust. "Great. Now I have a pigeon underneath my shirt for nothing."

"What kind of pigeon?" Reid asked.

"Does it matter?" Emily asked. "Look, guys--"

"There are at least 17 different species of the American pigeon alone," Reid spouted. "There are up to 34 species of the Old World pigeon, but several of them are facing extinction."

"Honestly, Emily," said her mother Hotch, "if you're just going to go on and on about pigeons, I don't see why I need to be here."

Feeling abandoned by Gideon, Hotch was attempting to rekindle his relationship with his old college roommate, David Rossi, a renowned crime author whose books nobody sane has ever read.

"We're not here to talk about pigeons!" Emily yelled, and for the first time since this meeting was called, silence was achieved.

"We're not?" Reid said despondently.

"Well, maybe we can do that _after_ we figure out what to do about this person who's trying to take over our company."

"Somebody's trying to take over our company?" Morgan asked.

"Does that mean our stock is worth something again?" JJ asked.

"Who's trying to take over our company?" Reid asked.

"Me."

All eyes turned to the stranger who had entered the room without them knowing (as they were so invested in Reid's talk about pigeons), a machine gun-wielding brunette with several rounds of ammo strapped to her body.

Reid's eyes lit up. "Elle!" he exclaimed gleefully. "You came back!"

"That's right," Elle said as she aimed the gun towards Hotch. "I came back."

*

Emily Prentiss and her family were currently being held hostage by their psychotic cousin Elle, who had been disowned months ago when she shot a man, claiming he was a rapist.

He probably was.

They disowned her anyway.

And now there were bombs rigged to all the exits of their house, according to Elle.

Stuff never went well whenever Emily tried to call a meeting.

"We can talk about this," Emily reasoned, trying her best to keep her voice from wavering. "Let's just all calm down and, maybe, if you want, put down the gun?"

"Do I? Do I want to put down the gun?"

Elle emptied a few rounds into the ceiling. Unbeknownst to her, Gideon was hiding in the attic, and the the bullets, going through the sub-standard building material, made their way through two floors. They narrowly missed the fugitive, who was in the middle of a tea party with JJ's old dolls.

("What the *bleep*??? Polly, are you okay? Polly?")

"Way to go, Emily," JJ whisper-snapped. "This is all your fault."

"All _my fault_?"

"You're the one who threw the party."

"I called a meeting!"

"And now we're being held at gunpoint by a crazy woman," JJ said. "Are you proud of yourself?"

"Logically speaking, JJ is correct," said Reid.

"Is this a good time to take the pigeon out from my shirt?" Morgan asked.

"Children," said Hotch. "This is not the time to turn against each other. Although, Emily, I think we can all agree that this is your fault."

"No, Hotch, this is _your_ fault."

The gun was pointed at Hotch again, and if Emily and her siblings were better children, perhaps they would have been concerned.

They were not.

Hotch remained undaunted. "Elle," he said coolly, "you and I both know what happened down in that driveway."

"I had to defend myself!" Elle nearly screamed. "You never did anything for me! You sent me _home_ and I got _shot_! And then, you sent me away! You replaced me with _her_!"

"You were high!" Hotch shouted in return.

"You're drunk!"

"Not enough!"

"Everybody take a breather," Emily said.

So they did.

*

"Can I ask you a question?"

JJ and Emily were in the kitchen, fixing a sandwich for Elle as per her instructions.

"No, I'm not going to let you seduce me," Emily said.

Several weeks ago, JJ had discovered that she was, in fact, adopted. Since she was not biologically related to Emily, she had decided that it was to her advantage to seduce Emily, in order to blackmail Emily into giving her control of the company's finances.

It almost worked, until one night, when Will interrupted JJ's striptease, angry that JJ had stolen his satin thong.

("It looks better on me than it does on you!" he'd cried.

"Well, this is a mood killer," Emily muttered to herself.)

"Relax, it's not that," JJ said. "Did you say Elle was trying to buy out our company?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how I got us into this trouble in the first place."

"How many shares does she have?"

"I don't know the exact number. 39, maybe 40 percent?"

It suddenly dawned on JJ that perhaps Emily was not the person she should seduce after all.

*

Meanwhile, upstairs in the attic, Gideon was convinced that his wife's new boyfriend, Rossi, was trying to assassinate him. Fortunately, it was at this moment that Emily appeared, having sent JJ to deal with Elle for the time being.

"I have got to get out of here," he told his daughter. "I've got to take care of this family, and I'm going to begin by shooting that bastard who stole my wife and then tried to kill me!"

"That wasn't Rossi," Emily informed him. "That was Elle. Still is Elle, actually. She's seeking revenge against us for disowning her and she's going to kill us all."

"Oh." Gideon considered this. "I'm still going to shoot that bastard in the face."

"Gideon, did you hear the part where I said Elle is going to kill us all?"

"He calls Hotch Aaron. _I_ call Hotch Aaron!"

"I know that must be very upsetting, but---"

"I'm telling you, Emily, this family is going to fall apart if you don't help me do something to stop it. We'll never be able to go birdwatching as a family again. Remember how much fun we used to have?"

Emily didn't, because they never had any.

"Look, Gideon," she said, "I'm going to go downstairs and distract Elle from the windows. I need you to climb down and get us some help. Go to the nearest phone and call 911."

Gideon stared at her incredulously. "Are you stupid? Have you been taking idiot pills? I can't call the police! I'm a wanted fugitive!"

"I don't have any other choice! You're the one who said you wanted to keep this family together!"

The words finally registered, and Gideon said once more, with determination, "I'm going to keep this family together."

"You're going to keep this family together," Emily said.

"And then we're going to go birdwatching."

*

Before Emily could make her way back to the living room, her brother Reid approached her in the hallway.

"Emily, I have a plan," he announced. "I'm going to seduce Elle."

"Oh, Reid," Emily said. She touched his cheek. He was so lifelike. Sometimes she actually believed that he was a real person. "I don't think that's going to work."

"It's not going to be easy," Reid said, more to himself at this point than to his sister, "but I'm going to try. It is time for me to be a MAN. Take this, Mother!"

While Reid scuttled off to seduce Elle, for a reason unclear to Emily, JJ was already in the middle of seducing Elle.

"So, Elle," JJ began as she fanned herself with a copy of Poof! magazine, "is it just me or is it getting hot in here?"

Elle stopped glaring at Hotch long enough to see JJ taking off her shirt.

"My, I can't take this heat any longer," JJ purred as she slid out of the rest of her clothes. Lying on the sofa, JJ raised one leg towards Elle and offered, "Would you like to rub ice cubes all over my body?"

It was exactly at this minute that Will, whom nobody had realized was actually in the house with them, charged through the door and yelled, "Bitch!"

Elle looked up, startled, but Will had already grabbed the scrap of fabric from JJ's pile of discarded clothes and was shouting, "You stole my thong again!"

He removed his pants and quickly donned the garment over his denim cutoffs.

"He's right," Hotch remarked. "It does look better on him."

*

Morgan was already in the kitchen when Emily came in, looking for some privacy so she could gather herself together. Unfortunately, she happened to be invading her _brother's_ privacy, which is to say she came across her brother drawing a diamond on his chest with one of Will's lipsticks.

"What does this look like to you?" he asked, baring his chest to her.

"A diamond with a nipple in the middle?" Emily suggested.

Morgan looked down. "Dammit, the Q rubbed off. This was supposed to be the Queen of Diamonds."

Emily knew she had no chance of getting some peace and quiet, but she thought she could at least have a drink. To her dismay, Morgan had already taken the last of Reid's juiceboxes and had replaced it with a brown paper bag.

"What the hell is this?" she demanded.

"Oh, don't eat that," Morgan cautioned. "My pigeon's in there."

Indeed, his pigeon was in there.

In retrospect, it had said in block letters on the side of the bag, DEAD BIRD. DO NOT EAT.

"Why is there a dead pigeon in my fridge?"

Morgan stopped coloring his nipples and glowered at Emily. "I was trying to do something for our family!" he snarled. "Excuse me if I'm the only one who is making an effort to get us out of here."

Emily had no way of knowing this, but having discovered that Elle had cut all the phone lines, Morgan had, moments earlier, resorted to other methods of communication.

"Fly, little friend," he said, as he finished tying the note to the pigeon's foot. "Fly like the wind beneath your wings. Your wings? My wings. No, your wings."

The pigeon cocked its head at him.

"Fly," he carried on, finally letting go of the majestic creature. "Carry this message to the police. You are our last hope at saving ourselves."

Unfortunately, Morgan had forgotten to open the window.

"Well," Morgan said, staring at the bird's carcass, which now lay on the floor, its neck broken, the note still tied to his foot. "I'm going to need to do another act."

*

Emily returned to the living room, only to find her brother and sister embroiled in a fight over who could successfully seduce Elle.

"I'm seducing her!" JJ shouted. "I was here first!"

"I'm a genius!" Reid shouted back. "I know everything there is to know about the art of seduction! You'll never be able to seduce her like I will!"

"Great job raising your kids, Hotch," Elle said.

Hotch narrowed his eyes at her. "You shot a _rapist_ ," he admonished. "At least none of my kids have ever shot a rapist."

The volume escalated as everybody lapsed into heated debate, JJ and Reid over who would be more successful in seducing Elle, and Hotch and Elle over whether shooting rapists was grounds for being disowned, and it was at this moment that a troop of seemingly ill-dressed FBI agents burst into the building.

"FBI!" they announced, swiveling their hips.

"FBI?" Emily said.

"FBI?" Reid and JJ and Hotch said in unison.

"FBI?!" Elle said, startled. "You guys called the cops on me?"

Before anybody could stop her, she threw what appeared to be a grenade towards Emily and her family.

"DUCK!" Emily screamed.

For once in her life, her family did what she told them to.

*

It was not a grenade.

It was a coconut, which Emily discovered minutes later, when Morgan walked into the room and greeted the FBI agents.

"Hey, agents, what brings you here?" he asked, slapping one of them on the ass.

"You know the FBI?" Emily asked.

"What FBI?" Morgan said. "They aren't cops, they're strippers! See how hot they are?"

*

Peace and order was eventually restored, and Emily promised her family that she would never try to call a meeting again. The real FBI arrested Elle at the border, and hauled her back to the mental hospital in Las Vegas, from which she had escaped several days ago.

When Emily went up to the attic to relay the happy news to her father, she found him sitting at the dolls' table again, this time reading them a faded edition of the Field Guide to Wild Birds.

"Gideon," she said, taking a seat on a stack of Will's bestselling novel, The Man Inside Me, "I want to thank you."

"Thank me for what?" Gideon asked.

"Any other normal person would've called the cops. Only one person would call the Hot Agents instead."

Gideon closed the book he was reading. He removed his glasses and smiled at his daughter like the wise, gentle man that he wasn't.

"I said I would keep this family together."

"You did," conceded Emily.

"I couldn't have done it without your help. I'm proud of you, Emily," Gideon said.

Emily straightened, surprised to hear such encouraging words from her father.

"I think it's time for you to know the truth," Gideon continued.

"Oh no," Emily said.

"I may have commited some light . . . serial killing."

*

On the next _Criminal Minds_ :

Emily calls another meeting.

Nobody but the Hot Agents attend.


End file.
